Apple Time

I was in New York City for a recent week-long visit, and though I enjoyed seeing friends and sights and shows, I was reminded more than ever that I now live here. I think there are always going to be moments when I want to live there, but the city is so incredibly expensive and the pace and energy and stress of it all so exhausting. Spending $15-20 dollars on breakfast isn’t something I do here. I don’t even spend that much on dinner, most of the time. At one point I was walking down a Midtown sidewalk and was deliberately pushed by someone. Though I stopped and yelled at the person and asked what was wrong with them, it made me feel like I no longer have the thickness of skin needed for a place as crowded and frenetic as Manhattan.

I saw three shows, a baseball game, and a number of gallery and museum shows. I was looking forward to the Yankees for a couple of weeks running, and though I wasn’t able to find tickets online before I left Buffalo, I planned to try the stadium window on Friday night. The World Champs were in town from Philly, and so was the fleet. I’ve never gone to a baseball game by myself, and plunked down fifty for a seat on the Terrace behind left field. Pretty high up, and unfortunately I had the one seat between two large men. A friend refers to the physical overspill from one seat to another “thigh seepage”. Double thigh seepage. I had a feeling that if I actually made it to the Stadium the Yankees would lose, which they did. The fans around me were hooting and hollering about the fourth-string catcher, Kevin Cash, and complaining about Joe Girardi. I understand reaction, and wanting to win all the time, but sports aren’t separate from life, or separate from any kind of work. Some days you aren’t going to win. Some days are going to be dull. Some days you are going to lose. And maybe some days you have to let someone play who lacks what other have. Perhaps I just was looking for the silver lining between the pinstripes.

I saw “Exit the King” on Saturday with Geoffrey Rush, Susan Sarandon, Lauren Ambrose and Andrea Martin. I don’t know the play, but it’s being by Ionesco gave me a faint idea of what might be in store. So I was really blown away by how great this play and this production were. The play, about a dying king, is a meditation on life, death, mortality, power, madness, relationships, and more. The cast was mostly brilliant. Andrea Martin stole almost every moment she had onstage, dialogue or none. Lauren Ambrose was always brilliant in “Six Feet Under” and I’d missed seeing her in “Hamlet” and “Awake and Sing!” so the chance to see her here was worthwhile. Geoffrey Rush was astonishing, and so were Brian Hutchinson and William Sadler. The curiosity (and another selling point) of the casting was Susan Sarandon. She played the role of the elder wife of King Berenger with a remote, lofty cool, very much the Sarandon persona in many of her movie roles. Between bits, she didn’t seem to know what to do with herself; I wanted a sense of her character even when she was just sitting down. Thiough her performance clicked in the queen’s long monologue that closes the play, I could help feeling that Stockard Channing or Sigourney Weaver would have known how to convey a sense of the character just sitting there without pulling focus, the way the other actors were, and still been able to convey the messages in that important last scene.

Real daring in art is something to experience, and “Next to Normal” is a daring, brave musical. It’s about a family breakdown and the breakdown of members of that family, but it is wise and funny and sad. And provocative. Alice Ripley is perfect in the pivotal role of the mother, and so is Jennifer Diamiano as her daughter. Aaron Tveit, the actor playing the son, is also very strong. But the twists in the musical aren’t simply the subject matter; the book reveals a critical piece of information slyly and slowly, and when you realize the full situation, what was until that point an unusually captivating musical about mental breakdown becomes something deeper. The lyrics weren’t always as surprising as the material, but so much about this musical is, that it balances out in the end. Very, very unexpected.

Sunday afternoon: the “Hair” revival Sunday afternoon. The iconic “American tribal love-rock musical” is definitely an artifact of its time. Much of the music sounds like Strauss waltzes compared to the amplified power chords in shows like “Rent” or “Spring Awakening.” The energy in the revival is infectious, and boy, did some of those bodies in the cast trigger some old (and not so old!) remembrances of desires past (and not so past!).